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Father to My Story": Writing Foe, De-Authorizing (De)Foe

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Father to My Story CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Alicante Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 18 (2005): 7-24 'Father to my story": Writing Foe, De-Authorizing (De)Foe Manuel Almagro Jiménez University of Seville [email protected] ABSTRACT Foe is probably not J.M. Coetzee's best known novel, although it is a text of great importance because of the way in which its political, literary and theoretical valúes are interrelated. The novel addresses a foundational myth of Western societies in the figure of Robinson Crusoe, and draws attention to its textual quality. This concern with the process of representation and the narrative quality of our beliefs is also manifested throughout the novel in other issues. Thus, in the text there is a whole panoply of reflections about the central issues affecting the very mechanics of constructing a text, such as, for example, the proper way a story should be written, the relationship between representation and its referent in the real, the problem of realism, or the question of authorship. 1. J.M. Coetzee has become an even better known writer after the concession of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Among bis most famous novéis are Waitingforthe Barbarians (1980) and Disgrace (1999). His latest novel, Elizabeth Costello, appeared in 2003. Between Waitingfor the Barbarians and Disgrace he published Foe (1986), a novel which critics have considered as something apart from the other novéis, a transitional work, both in terms of its fhemes and its technique, something like a halt in his career. As a matter of fact, Foe seems to possess a different quality for in it one does not find that openly political element which is often the hallmark of previous and later novéis. But fhat would be an acceptable view only if we restrict our reading to a very superficial level and see it as a sort of literary divertimento, the typical postmodern artifact which takes the usual guise of 8 Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses literature about literatura (although one could ask if there is a literature that is not ultimately aboutliterature). I would like to suggest that Foe is, in fact, a political novel as much as any of his other novéis, not only because of the frame of reference which establishes its origin (the figure of Robinson Crusoe and what it means in the Western cultural imaginary), but also in a deeper sense because, beyond specific political problems, the novel deals with issues that have to do with the way in which language is used to genérate a fabulation that can be offered and accepted as real, as an objective representation of an unquestionable reality. The novel highlights the degree to which writing a story is actually an activity which implies manipulating the original elements into an acceptable text, even if in the process, which culminates in a myfhological creation, some factual details, as important as those included in the representation, are left out. The novel also emphasizes how this process determines the quality of the representation and how the creation of the mythos can only be done at the expense of sacrificing, at least partly, fidelity to the original experience or material. 2. The first problem that the reader faces in this novel has to do with deciding, at least approximately, what it is about, its main concern. Very often this is solved by simply saying that Foe is a re-writing of, or a variation on, Robinson Crusoe, or even a parody by means ofpostcolonial intertextuality (Hirsch, 1999:8). But if this isa variation, in"Heand His Man", his Nobel Prize lecture, Coetzee presents yet another variation on Cruso and Friday in a text which considers the relationship between fact and fiction, the real and the represented, and the question of writing and authorship. That Coetzee is interested in these issues is manifested also in how his latest novel, Elizabeth Costello, reflects, sometimes in subtle ways, on the relationship between literature and reality. The protagonist, for example, is a writer who has written a novel about Molly Bloom, the well-known character in James Joyce's Ulysses. But there is a coincidence here which is too good to be unintentional, and it is that her last ñame is the same as that of a real critic, Peter Costello, who has written a real "biography" of Leopold Bloom.1 In view of these intertextual connections, I would like for my part to suggest that Foe is another case in point, offering more than simply a re-writing of an earlier text. More specifically, I would say that Coetzee's novel presents us with a sort of "investigation" of a possibly silenced origin of Defoe's text, in an exercise not of science-fiction but of literature-fiction, if such redundant term can help for the moment. And I would add that this exercise, actually a sophisticated game with the history of literature, is carried out through a disguised variation on the strategy of the found manuscript. Coetzee might have anteceded Susan's narrative with a preface (a perverse possibility for a future edition), indicating that his novel was in reality a found manuscript, written before Defoe wrote his novel. This would obviously change our view of Defoe's text, in a similar manner in which the Qumran manuscripts may question the "originality" of certain aspects of Christian mythology, even if there is an ontological difference between the real Qumran manuscripts and the fictive Foe, for while "Father to my story ": Writing Foe, De-Authorizing (De)Foe 9 the former are considered authentic, the latter belongs to the category of fictional biographies and invented memories. Playíng this variation of the found manuscript is an intrinsic strategy of this novel and it uses it emphatically, because from the very first word, that is from the title itself (which in this as in the case of the authorship is key for this aspect of our reading), the novel calis the reader's attention to the relationship between Coetzee's and Defoe's texts, to the peculiar and specific way in which they interact in an oppositional dialectic. This could be defined as "alteration", a term that subsumes the opposition between identity and difference, alludes to the possibility of becoming other, even the Other, includes all manner of inversions and subversions of ñames and stories, and echoes the related term of "alterities". The title is, then, the first instance of the alterations which Coetzee's novel makes explicit: Foe, and not Defoe. Similarly, later we will find Craso, not Crusoe. But other alterations can be mentioned at different levéis. Susan' s last ñame was originally Berton but "it became corrupted in the mouths of strangers" (10) and finally became Barton. And at another point she changes her ñame to become Mrs Craso (47). Ñames (and naming) are important for Susan, especially considering her awareness of how words acquire new meanings depending on where you are (108) or how the local culture identifies you with the wrong ñame. In Bahia she "was thought a whore. But there are so many whores there, or, as I prefer to cali them, freewomen, thatlwasnotdaunted" (115). But it is not only a free woman who can be considered a whore. Also the Muse/Susan is seen under the same light (145), and even Foe sees himself as "an oíd whore...who should ply her trade only in the dark" (151).2 In order to avoid sexual attacks while they are on the road to Bristol, Susan decides to disguise herself and change her appearance "hoping to pass for a man" (101). This is just one instance of the various subsequent changes and even inversions of roles concerning Susan and her relationship with Foe. This inversión reaches its climax in her desire to become "father to my story" (123) and to exchange roles with Foe, both literally in their sexual encounter (139-40), and in their literary relationship: she will be the Muse that "must do whatever lies in her power to father her offspring" (140), while Foe will be the mother who is seen "at his labours" (145), as a result of his having been visited by the Muse. And he will also enter a marital relationship with Susan in which again the roles will be reversed so that Foe will be not only the "intended" (126) but much more: "I think of you as a mistress, or even, if I daré speak the word, as a wife" (152). In the same way that Foe alters his own ñame to make it Defoe, he alters Susan's story to make it Cruso(e)'s story in spite of her attempts to control the writing of her story. And one of the important changes between Defoe' s narrrative and Susan' s alleged original lies precisely in the figure of Susan, which is completely omitted, so that it is not only the "linguistic" silence of Friday that is highlighted but also the implicit silence about the existence of a woman on the island. Likewise, the relationship between Craso and Friday is somewhat altered. Craso did not find a footprint on the sand and later on Friday, but the two men carne together to the island, as they managed to survive the wreck of the ship on 10 Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses which they were sailing (54). Lastly, another important alteration, which may be explained as a political move on the part of the author himself, has to do with Coetzee's altering the origin of Friday, not a Carib as in Defoe's text but a negro of African origin.
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